The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-08-03
Producers.

Rev. DR.. g. M. Steele, in Work and
Wages, says: " Is it really true that la
Dor produces all the work of the world?
OF course by labor here is meant the
putting forth of physical energy, other
wise the succeeding sentences have no
meaning. Does any one who thinks at
all about the subject believe that the
great factories, the docks. the vast
buildings of stone and brick and iron
in our great cities, the railroads, the
mighty steamships, the complicated
machines and innumerable other struc-
lures are the result of manual labor
alone? Suppose there is line of rail-
road fifty miles in length to be built,
and five thousand steady, intelligent
and reliable laborers are told to 90 and
build it. Will they be able to build
the bridges, to make the deep cuts, to
construct the causeways through treach-
erous swamps, to calculate the grades
and do other equally difficult parts of
the work? How many ordinary wage
laborers would it take to produce
Corliss engine, the first of its kind?
No; there must be much beside mus
cular effort in order to attain these re-
suits. There must be toll of brain long
and protracted, and often eXhausting
thought, sometimes accompanied by
great sacrifices and great hardships. In
order to extensive production there are
required great mental qualities, some
of them of rare kind. There is needed
power TO contrive, to invent, to Or
ganize, to direct, or little can be
achieved. The man who blows the Or
gan might claim that he produces all
the music of the instrument. 1t is true
he is generally an essential condition,
but not by any means the only or the
most essential condition. No more is
manual labor the only or the most
essential condition of the production of
great wealth."
This is a pretty conclusive exposi-
ton of one of the popular fallacies of
the radical labor reformers, the tendency
of which is to weaken the sense of OBJ
legation to employers of labor and to
claim monopoly of all the results of
productive industry for the working
men themselves. This theory is based
upon falsehood, for every man who
contributes in any way to the attain
ment of intellectual and moral ends
who furnishes knowledge to his fellow
men, instructs them how to observe, to
investigate, to classify and use their
knowledge-is as much producer as
the man who raises crop of grain,
who constructs a building or who
works in a coal-mine, and he is lust as
much entitled to the fruits of his labor
A man who combines and manages
capital, so that any great enterprise is
established and carried on to the benefit
of the community, is producer of far
reaching results. The work of the
teacher, the moralist, the journalist,
the political economist and the states
man is as real, as necessary, as useful,
each in its way, as the construction of
houses or the cultivation of land
Without these agencies which produce
organization, knowledge, taste, refine
ment and morality, the world would Ill
timately lapse into barbarism. Civili-
cation cannot exist or advance without
them, and therefore the disposition on
the part of labor reform extremists to
deprecate their value, because they are
not the products of physical labor, is
rank injustice. All labor, whether
mental or physical, which produces
beneficent results is equally honorable.